


Number the Frog Bellies

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2020-01-15 20:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18506845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Homesmut fill for this prompt: https://homesmut.livejournal.com/10240.html?thread=17899008#t17899008CaN i GeT tHaT fInE AsS mOtHeRfUcKeR tAv GeTtInG sOmE oF hIs MaCk On ThAt OtHeR fInE mOtHeRfUcKeR kArKaT wHiLe ThEy BoTh GeT tHeIr ChIlL oN aLl Up On SoMe rOof? ShIt MaN tHaT bE mOtHeRfUcKiNg SeXy As BiTcHtItS





	Number the Frog Bellies

Sitting with his back against the rusted shell of a ventilation fan, Karkat's arms were loosely wrapped around one drawn up knee. The other asteroids in the Veil obscured his view of the Incipisphere. Of course. He had climbed the entire way up there in order to stare at something _other_ than a computer screen or laboratory walls for awhile and was rewarded with empty, dead rocks on all sides. Even the possibility of other abandoned labs, other long corridors, and other forests of glass cylinders containing lusii abominations suspended in slime was left to his imagination. 

Somewhere in the blackness beyond the Veil, Bec Noir was waiting to bring swift, piercing death to a player sitting alone and exposed on a laboratory roof. That possibility should have been enough to send Karkat through the hatch to relative safety, but a part of him –that small, familiar voice in the back of his thinkpan– was idly wondering if it would really be such a great loss. The leader in him was quick to chide that Bec Noir wouldn't stop with him, but would descend and rip rainbow slaughter through the whole team. Shrinking against the base of the fan, Karkat tried to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible. Just another minute or two, then he would get up and go back down. 

A loud sound jolted him from his melancholy, metal smashing against metal. Equipping his sickles, he listened carefully, ears twitching. There was a series of crashes, each slightly quieter than the last, until they were replaced entirely by a high-pitched keen. Shifting to a tense crouch, he peered around the fan's shell, testing his grip on one of his sickle handles. Determining that the sounds had been too muted for their source to be with him on the roof, he eyed the hatch. Drawing and slowly releasing a deep breath, he crept from behind the fan, moving slowly until the toe of one shoe struck the steel lip surrounding the hatch. He reflexively twirled his sickles before correcting his grip and leaning forward to see what was below. All the tension left him in one exasperated sigh. 

“NITRAM.” 

The Taurus lay in a crumpled heap at the base of the ladder, clearly dazed. 

Captchaloging his sickles, Karkat about-faced in order to descend the ladder. Careful not to step on the supine troll once reaching the bottom, he bent down to grab Tavros under his arms and heave him to his clumsy, robotic feet. 

“Did you fall down the ladder?” 

“Uh.” Tavros brushed himself off, absently straightening his shirt. “Yeah, I did.” He winced, rubbing his shoulder where it had struck the floor. 

“I'm curious to know why somebody who HAS YET TO FUCKING WORK OUT STAIRS, would then go and try to climb a ladder…” 

“I thought I might be able to pull myself up mostly by my arms. They're pretty strong from, uh, using my four wheel device.” He curled one arm to present a bicep only to be sharply reminded that he was injured when his shoulder twinged again. “But my new legs are a lot heavier than I thought.” 

Staring at Tavros for a moment, Karkat shook off his dumbfounded look, exchanging it for one of contempt. “Why were you trying to get up there anyway?” 

Tavros turned slightly copper, looking down as he shuffled unsteadily on his feet. “The view.” 

“The what?” 

“The view?” Tavros rubbed the back of his neck. “Been thinking about home and how Tinkerbull and I used to, uh, watch the moons. Kind of wanted to see what the sky looks like out there.” 

Karkat cleared his throat, finding himself suppressing an eye roll. “Yeah, well, it isn't safe up there. It's too exposed.” 

“Oh.” Tavros nodded, looking mournfully of the ladder. “What does it look like?” 

“You can't really see a lot. All the other asteroids are in the way.” 

“Then it's not that exposed.” 

“What?” 

“If you can't see out, then, Jack can't see in either, right?” Tavros placed a hand on a ladder rung. 

“Maybe, maybe not. I don't think we should risk it,” Karkat added a little defensively, not liking his leadership challenged by Tavros of all trolls. “And you're not going to be able to see much by your own _hypothesis_ – AND YOU'RE JUST GOING TO FALL AGAIN!” 

Tavros had gripped the next rung, letting his legs hang limp while he tried to drag himself upward. He wobbled ominously and Karkat's pan locked up over whether to help or just get out of the landing zone. 

“DAMMIT TAV.” Karkat had the Taurus by the waist before he realized he had made a decision. He sighed. “There's no point in having robot legs if you're not going to learn how to use them. Get down for a second.” Karkat let go so Tavros could lower himself back to the floor. “Okay, now sit down.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I want to look at the bottom of your foot and I'm gonna assume you haven't learned how to balance on just one, so let's just skip ahead to your ass on the floor.” 

Nodding, Tavros used the ladder for support as he sank to the floor with a dull clank. He stretched his legs out in front of him, chancing to lift one for Karkat to take hold. 

Sinking down to one knee to keep from tipping Tavros onto his back, Karkat let the heel rest in one palm while he ran his other hand over the sole, happy to find that the sweaty bastard had molded arches into the ridiculous shoe-feet. “Alright, good. Give me your hand.” Taking Tavros' hand, he guided it to run fingertips along the arch. “Feel that? When you put your foot on the rung, make sure it slides into that groove.” 

“Uh, okay.” 

Karkat dropped Tavros' foot, climbing back to his own before watching Tavros lift himself up with help from the ladder. “Keep using your amazing Cripple Strength to hold onto the rungs and line up those grooves so your feet don't slip.” 

“Wow, thanks Karkat.” Glancing over his shoulder at the other troll, Tavros stepped up and heard the clunk of the rung slipping into place. Reaching for the next rung, he gripped tightly enough to whiten his knuckles before lifting himself. 

Waiting for the pattern to repeat three times, Karkat mounted the ladder behind Tavros, maintaining enough distance to avoid being kicked in the head. “Don't. Fucking. Fall. On. Me,” he warned. 

“I'll try not to.” Tavros decided not to glance back at Karkat as they climbed higher and higher. 

Watching their progress from below, Karkat cleared his throat as he grabbed the next rung. “Alright, we're almost th–” 

_THUNK!_

“FUCK!” 

Karkat's head smacked against the bottom of Tavros' feet. He winced, kneading his scalp. “Why did you stop?” Looking up, he snorted. Tavros' horns had caught on the edges of the hatch leading to the roof. 

“Uhh…” Wincing, Tavros tipped his head back, tilted it to get one horn through, and then tilted it at the opposite angle to get the other through. Continuing on, he pulled himself up and onto the roof. Finding his footing, he turned to offer Karkat a hand if he needed it. 

Narrowing his eyes, Karkat hesitated a moment before accepting Tavros' hand pulling him up to join the other troll. “There.” He brushed off his pants. “See? There's nothing to fucking… see.” Looking up, he watched Tavros crossing to the opposite side. Following grudgingly behind, he jammed his hands into his pockets. “Or not.” 

In the absence of the purple gloom once cast by Derse, there were distant pinpoints of different colored light. 

“What do you think they are? Other sessions of the game? Frog bellies growing new universes?” 

Standing beside Tavros, Karkat squinted at the lights before shrugging. “They're probably just the phosphorescent wrath sphincters of the Horrorterrors.” 

“…oh. “Then they're very pretty, uh, sphincters.” 

Karkat laughed despite himself. It came out as a short, derisive bark. “You should ask Feferi to pass that onto them for you.” 

Tavros looked down at his feet, worrying his lower lip as he struggled to sink slowly into a sitting position. Wanting to cross his legs, he lifted and bent them each manually. Looking up when Karkat sat beside him, he smiled. 

“What are those…” Karkat trailed off, averting his eyes. His habit of being generally apathetic toward Tavros was warring with his curiosity. Curiosity triumphed. “What are those like? Can you, I don't know, feel them?” 

“Not really.” Tavros rapped on one thigh with his knuckles. “I can feel their heaviness pulling on me. I can feel them moving when I want them to, most of the time. They don't seem to be as… bendable as my old legs were? When they still worked, I mean.” 

“Have you told Equius that?” 

“Uh, no. I don't want him to think I'm not grateful that he made me these. And I really don't want to make him angry. He's scary when he's angry.” 

“Him punching your legs off in a fit of sweaty freak rage _would_ be counterproductive, but you'd just have to order him to make you a better pair. If you can ignore his terrible stench and awkward erection, you'd be all set.” 

“Uhhh…” 

“That was a joke, fuckass. Now's the part where you laugh.” 

“Ha, ha?” 

“Good job.” Reaching out, Karkat lightly tapped one claw against the nearest of Tavros' legs. “Really it was pretty fucking shitty of him to just strap these on you without teaching you how to use them.” 

“He did warn me about stairs.” 

“But not about ladders.” 

Tavros smiled, shaking his head. “No, not about ladders.” 

Silence lingered in the space between them for several minutes before it was broken by the sound of Karkat absently picking his teeth with his claws. 

“Getting used to using them has been hard. Can't get help from Equius because of the rage punching and, uh, disturbing indicators of arousal. And the only other troll he's built a replacement part for is–” 

“A huge, psychotic bitch. Is she still all on your bulge, metaphorically speaking – _FUCK_ – about filling quadrants?” 

“Not really. Not since she reached God Tier.” 

“Probably because she didn't have a coma fetish. But hey, you dodged a lunatic bullet by sleeping through the majority of the game! Seems like she's developed a taste for inter-species romance anyway.” 

“With the human called John?” 

“Yes.” 

“I never tried trolling him.” 

“KEEP IT THAT WAY. You'd probably get along perfectly, spending hours and hours giggling about ghosts and fairies and windy magic bullshit. And then the others would discover my corpse by following the trail of my own organs that I projectile vomited across the lab.” 

“So he's nice?” 

“He's an idiot. A buck-toothed, obnoxiously cheerful, pajama-clad idiot.” 

“Do you hate him?” 

“Platonically. NEW TOPIC! Or old topic, if you want to split protein strands. You could have tried talking to the Aradiabot about your legs, but she wasn't exactly known for giving straightforward answers, especially if the question had nothing to with our impending doom.” 

“Aradia and me never really talked after Vriska did, uh, whatever she did. She just seemed so… not sad exactly. More like not anything.” 

“I'm still not absolutely sure what happened either. I think Sollux knows, but he refuses to talk about it. If she needed an entire body from Equius, then she was something like – never tell Egbert this, he'll start typing out that insipid song – a ghost.” 

“So she died and then died more when her robot had an explosion?” 

“No idea. I mean, fuck, if she could exist without a body before the robot, you'd think she would have just gone back to being annoyingly cryptic maroon text in a Trollian window, but no one's heard from her since.” 

Tavros frowned down at his hands, shifting his legs which scraped noisily against the surface of the roof. “Not even in the dream bubbles?” 

“If anyone came across her in there, I haven't heard about it.” 

Going quiet, Tavros fumbled another question around in his head that he didn't know how to ask in a way that wouldn't send Karkat into a screaming binge or possibly even chase him off the roof, leaving Tavros to navigate climbing down the ladder alone. “Uh… do you think this is what Aradia meant, when she talked about us being doomed and the world ending?” 

Karkat laughed quite differently than before, it came out high-pitched and strangled. “Did you ever hear her, read her, fuck whatever, go on and on about that shit? Talking in endless contradictions about how we would 'insure 0ur destructi0n by preventing it.' An infinite circle jerk of survivaldeath and successfailure ejaculating zeroes and dead-eyed emoticons.” He snorted, shaking his head. “I thought I'd figured it out, briefly, right after we killed the Black King. End of the world, the meteor collisions and the Vast Glub taking out the planet and the rest of our species, pretty obvious. The twelve of us survived, or eleven and a half of us if you subtract for whatever the fuck Aradia was, and we succeeded in creating the new universe thereby staving off our own destruction. _Hurray! Break out the fermented grain slurry and heartily grasp your shame globes!_ ” Karkat's voice went squeaky, cracking a bit as he waved his hands around. “And then Jack happened. Aradia saved us all from dying right there, but she never waxed indecipherable on how HE fit into the picture. Is he an aberration that the ghosts in her head FORGOT TO MENTION or is this all just Paradox Space BENDING US OVER THE COSMIC ACTIVITY SLAB ONE LAST TIME BEFORE WE EARN THAT INFAMOUS DOOM OF OURS?” 

Tavros stared at Karkat while his volume steadily increased throughout his rant and continued to stare even when the other troll fell into silence, breathing heavily. 

Meeting Tavros' eye after a moment, Karkat shook his head in disbelief. “Why am I telling you this? I mean, you asked,” he mumbled more to himself, “but fuck, of all the… fuck.” Clearing his throat, he looked away, then froze when he felt a hand come lightly to rest on his shoulder. Turning back, the warning scrape of metal was not enough to prepare him for Tavros' lips to suddenly be brushing against his.


End file.
